


Second Chance

by Kalypso



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Episode: 2014 Xmas Last Christmas, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:39:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4383095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's no dream; Clara Oswald is ninety, nearing the end of a full life.  Sixty-two years ago, she parted from the Doctor on a lie.  Is it too late to change her story?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Chance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AstroGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/gifts).



> This developed from two things: my dissatisfaction seven months ago with the ending of _Last Christmas_ \- because if the Doctor can't tell how old Clara is, why wouldn't he ask her to come with him anyway? - and a recent conversation with [KerrAvonsen](http://archiveofourown.org/users/KerrAvonsen) about Clara's lying. I doubt that this is the fic she was looking for, but it's helped me to work through some thoughts I didn't know I had. And I hope [AstroGirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl) will accept it as a late birthday present.
> 
> My thanks as ever to [fengirl88](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88) for her advice, and I am indebted to [Chakoteya.net](http://www.chakoteya.net/doctorwho/)'s very useful transcripts.

It's Christmas Day, and the Doctor's sitting on my bed, holding my hand.

"The TARDIS is outside," he says.

"So?"

"So, all of time and all of space is sitting out there. A big blue box."

He stares at me so expectantly that I laugh.

His face looked so old when I first saw it, but now he seems like a boy, not much older than Courtney Woods when I was teaching her and no one ever imagined the elder stateswoman she would become.

"Doctor, I'm ninety!"

"So?" He seems puzzled.

"I'm not up to the running any more. I've retired from adventures."

"Oh, nonsense! I barely left Gallifrey before I was ninety!"

"I'm sorry, Doctor." I stroke his cheek. "I haven't aged as well as you. Come on, help me get up. I was just having a nap before dinner, and I can't eat it all on my own."

I need to distract him from the truth, before he realises. When I dreamed of Christmas with Danny, it wasn't the Doctor who scrawled "dying" on the blackboard, it was me - the sensible me. That was why I - the wild I - didn't want to wake up. I could have gone on dreaming of a Christmas that never was, rather than facing reality - a few more weeks' life, trapped in a failing body and a house I can't leave.

I'm very tired after dinner, but the Doctor helps me pull a cracker. I wonder if he's remembering the last time we did that, when I helped him, a very old man on Trenzalore.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I was stupid. I should have come back earlier; I wish that I had."

He doesn't say he _will_ come back earlier, and I'm oddly relieved. I'd have liked more time with him, but going back now would be wrong; I've lived my life, and it was good. I don't want the last sixty-two years wiped out.

My single life, I call it. Not just because I was alone after Danny died and the Doctor departed. Once they'd gone, I had to relearn how to focus on the life in front of me, on this planet, in my own lifetime.

When I jumped into the Doctor's timeline, I lived a thousand lives in a thousand places. I can't remember much: fragments still come to me, usually in dreams, though there's something in them that's quite unlike ordinary dreams. But as long as I was having adventures like the ones I half-remembered, and travelling with the Doctor who recurred again and again in those half-memories, even if his face changed - _that_ meant those fragments flooded my brain, and it was much more difficult to hold firmly to one lifestory. It was easy to think I could juggle a double life with Danny and the Doctor - when I'd lived so many, how could two be a problem? And it was easy to lie, because just about anything could be true in one of my lives, even if it wasn't the one I was living when I opened my mouth.

The Doctor knew, of course - he tells enough lies to recognise a fellow practitioner. He warned me, and I wouldn't listen. Danny knew, too, and it pained him, because he was honest through and through. In time, I couldn't bear his pain, and I decided to tell him the truth, all of it, but I was too cowardly to look him in the eye as I did it. So I called him while he was on his way to see me, and that was why he didn't hear the car. My truth-telling led to his death.

But it was lies that drove the Doctor and me apart. We lied to set one another free, and for once we fooled each other: that he'd got his home back, that I'd got my love back. It's taken more than sixty years to realise - for me, at least - I don't know whether it's minutes or centuries for him. Of course I regret losing him for so long. But I don't regret my single life.

I just want more. I want him to ask me again. I want to leave sensible me in bed, so wild I can fly away. I look round for the Doctor, to tell him I'm coming after all, and see nothing but an empty cracker.

I sigh, and slowly haul myself upstairs to bed.

 

It's Christmas Day, and the Doctor's sitting on my bed, holding my hand.

"Doctor - am I young?" I ask.

"No idea," he says.

Can he _really_ not tell the difference between twenty-eight and ninety, or is he lying to me so I can lie to him?

He brings me a mirror. "Is that any good?"

Whatever he sees, he's giving me the choice.

I look at my wrinkles and grey hair in the mirror, and smile. "Oh, that's good!" It's not a lie _exactly_...

"The TARDIS is outside," he says.

"So?"

"So, all of time and all of space is sitting out there. A big blue box. Please - don't even argue." He holds out his hand.

Smiling, I take it. I didn't want to die here, in my bed. But the TARDIS - that's how I'd like to go. There might even be time to save the world first.

The Doctor's chattering happily, like a child, something about the rarity of second chances.

His second chance, my last one. I seize it.


End file.
